Home School Room Organization

Our school room is always a mess. The mess is the biggest reason we created a school room to begin with. I am still having organization problems, though. When it's a mess, no learning can take place there. And because that's where all our stuff is, learning doesn't take plane when it's a mess. Well...book learning doesn't take place.

We have gone from a huge three-ring binder with weekly planner pages; to a huge three-ring binder with a separate, bound planner; to a one week, one inch, three-ring binder with separate, bound planners. Putting papers back in them at the end of the day is still a challenge.

The other, bigger problem is organization for the desk drawers and shelves. There's kind of a general order. But keeping things in more specific order is harder. While I was cleaning and clearing and flinging today, I made a list of things that might make organizing magazines, paper and books easier.

I need to buy:

• some pencil boxes to accommodate markers and colored pencils. Remember all those great art supplies that I got for 5 or 6 dollars? Not so great just rolling around, making a mess.
  
• one of those really large CD cases, I have three, small, full ones plus several loose CDs.
• some 2" deep containers that will fit in the middle drawer for office supplies
• batteries for the three timers I bought to help the boys get work done in a timely manner. Not at all helpful with dead batteries.
• a magazine holder. I already have one, full one. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought just one. I used to save magazines like crazy. But I stopped. I still have a lot of magazines, though. Maybe I should go back through them.
• another router. Ours just went bad one day. We are blessed to have two desktop computers. It would be real nice to be able to hop on educational (of course) web sites in the school room, rather than get up and trek to the dining room, get distracted while the computer's booting up, go outside to swing, get called back to look at a two minute BrainPop video, have to go to the bathroom, wait...come back, bicker with brothers, then have to start cleaning for fighting, never getting to watch the two minute BrainPop video. Clearly, a router is necessary.
  
• I have three black ink cartridges and one color ink cartridge to be refilled. Plus the ones actually in the printers are near empty, might as well get those done too. Did you know many Walgreen's do cartridge refills, now? $10 for black, $15 for color. Can't beat it. Unless you do it yourself. And I have. Not color, I tried that once, I ended up with a lot of green ink. You can do it without a huge amount of mess. I always end up with a little bit of splatter on the desk, but it generally cleans up easily. I'm lazy and will gladly pay Walgreen's $10 to do it.
  

What kind of organization tool has revolutionized your school room? OK not revolutionized, but made it easier?